Case Study: Treating Refugees, Three Minutes at a Time

For anyone like the more than 1,000 Syrian people seeking refuge in early 2015, living in crisis and extreme poverty poses many health risks. Poor skin care is a danger, and it’s often a neglected area of public health. Untreated skin conditions can lead to troubling health issues, such as physical pain, infection, and the inability to work. To help Syrian refugees at risk of such issues, Direct Relief organized a six-day mission to treat and document skin conditions among refugees living in a high-need rural area of Jordan.

Direct Relief supplied each medical record scribe with an Android tablet equipped with the Survey 123 for ArcGIS® app. Survey 123 for ArcGIS is a new app that supports disconnected editing and simple data capture through customizable forms. Despite the remote nature of the refugee camps and limited time, the scribes were able to easily use the app as part of the triage process. Using the app’s offline capabilities, scribes quickly entered accurate data for each patient, including name, symptoms, diagnosis, and location. Teams also uploaded audio and photos to medical records and used the app’s multilanguage function in the surveys. When teams returned to camp each day, Direct Relief was able to sync and instantly share the data with partner agencies via real-time maps hosted in ArcGISSM Online.